Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked the Supreme Court to decide whether Donald Trump enjoys immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes he may have committed while in office. This is the first time that the Supreme Court will intervene in the historical trials against the former president, writes News.ro.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has asked the Supreme Court to step in and rule on the issue of presidential immunity over former President Donald Trump’s allegations of meddling in the 2020 federal election, CNN and ABC News reported.

Jack Smith is asking the court to quickly resolve this issue to avoid rescheduling the court date set for March 4. “However, the defendant’s appeal of the waiver of immunity and related claims suspends the trial of the charges against him, scheduled for March 4, 2024,” the special prosecutor wrote Monday in filings submitted to the Supreme Court. “It is vital to society that the defendant’s immunity claims are resolved by this court and that the defendant’s trial proceeds as quickly as possible if his immunity claim is denied,” says Jack Smith.

In August, Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he ran a “criminal scheme” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He allegedly did so by compiling a list of so-called “fraudulent voters” using the Justice Department’s “election fraud investigation.” trying to convince Vice President Mike Pence to “change the results of the election” and pushing false claims that the election was rigged during the January 6 riot at the Capitol – all with the goal of undermining democracy and staying in power.

In October, Trump’s legal team filed its first motion to dismiss the case, citing the president’s “absolute immunity” from prosecution for actions taken while in the highest federal office. The judge hearing the case, Washington District Judge Tanya Chutkan, denied the motion. Trump then asked the district court to stay all proceedings in the case pending an appeal.

Smith’s team said over the weekend that the district court should deny the motion to stay the proceedings.

Now, special counsel Jack Smith’s extraordinary request is an attempt to save the timeline of the trial, which has been opened for trying to interfere with the results of the election.

A precedent has been identified

Smith is asking the Supreme Court to take the rare step of bypassing a federal appeals court and quickly resolving a key issue in Trump’s case. The special counsel’s team cites a similar maneuver used in US v. Nixon, a 1974 Supreme Court case in which justices rejected then-President Richard Nixon’s claims of presidential privilege in a legal battle to release Oval Office records. In this case, the Supreme Court moved quickly to resolve the issue so that one of the Watergate-era cases could move forward quickly.

“Historically, the Supreme Court has rarely agreed to this maneuver — to hear an appeal before a federal appeals court has had a chance to do so,” CNN analyst Steve Vladek told CNN. Supreme Court and a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

In essence, Smith’s team is now asking the court to rule on District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that Trump, as a former president, is not immune from prosecution for attempted election interference filed in Washington, DC. Attorneys for the former president argued that Trump’s alleged actions regarding the 2020 election results were part of his official duties at the time and therefore protected by presidential immunity.

Prosecutors are also asking the court to decide whether Trump is protected from double jeopardy. Defense attorneys argued that because Trump was acquitted by the Senate during impeachment proceedings while he was president, he could not face criminal charges for the same alleged acts.